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740-AM The Fan to stay all sports due to contract with KFAN

FARGO – Upon further review, it appears “The Paul Allen Project” heard on 740-AM The Fan in the Fargo-Moorhead area will not be pre-empted.

Radio Fargo-Moorhead operations manager Joel Heitkamp said Thursday it’s looking less likely that his “News & Views” show on KFGO-AM will be simulcast on The Fan. RFM on Tuesday sent out a news release announcing plans of having Heitkamp’s

8:30-11 a.m. show also air on The Fan because of its wide-ranging signal.

RFM owns both The Fan and KFGO. Moreover, there may also be paperwork considerations for not doing a simulcast.

The Allen show, which is based in the Twin Cities on KFAN Sports Radio, runs from 9 a.m.-noon. Chad Abbott, the program director for KFAN Sports Radio, said the contract with RFM “reads that they have to carry the show.”

It wasn’t immediately clear if 740-AM The Fan could be in danger of losing the right to air Minnesota Vikings games if the simulcast policy becomes reality. Allen is the play-by-play voice of the Vikings. But Abbott did say, “Generally, affiliation with The Fan radio network brings Vikings radio affiliation.”

“The Fan will get (Allen) tomorrow, and it’s looking more and more like they’ll be getting him for a long time,” Heitkamp said.

Meanwhile, Heitkamp said RFM is working out details with other stations across the state to carry “News & Views.”

“After we made the (simulcast) statement on the air, we got a lot of feedback from listeners that even though they might like ‘News & Views,’ they didn’t want to lose PA either,” he said. “All of that has been taken under consideration. Really, the approach we’re taking is we want ‘News & Views’ to be the voice of the whole region, and if we have to find a different vehicle to do that with, or a number of different vehicles, then that’s what we’ll do.”

Prompting such a search was two western North Dakota stations, KFYR of Bismarck and KCJB of Minot, yanking their affiliation with KFGO and going with other programming.

Jim Lowe, market manager for Clear Channel Communications in Bismarck, said it was time “to move on to talk shows that are more relevant and focused on the lifestyle of western North Dakota.”

Forum reporter Jeff Kolpack can be reached at (701) 241-5546. Kolpack’s NDSU media blog can be found at www.areavoices.com/bisonmedia